Antonio di Nicolo Foscarini

As dawn broke over the Piazzetta San Marco in Venice, the body of a man hung from the gallows between the columns. There were no witnesses to this execution - it was a quiet affair carried out under the veil of night. The citizens of the Serenissima were understandably worried. This man was not common criminal - he was a man from a distinguished noble family.  What events had led to a man of such stature becoming victim of such a fate.

The Trial of Antonio Foscarini

Antonio the Ambassador:
Antonio Foscarini (b. 27.08.1570) was the third son of Nicolo di Alvise de ramo di S.Polo and Maria Barbarigo di Antonio.

Antonio began his diplomatic career as one of the representatives of the Republic of Venice to the Court of King Henri IV of France (1601) and was there, at Paris, in this capacity to celebrate Henri’s wedding to Marie de Medici. Despite being elected as Ambassador to France - “Ambasciatore ordinario in Francia” - (26th May 1607), he did not actually take up his position until February of the following year.

When he was elected Ambassador to England - “Ambasciatore ordinario in Inghilterra” - (July 1610), he again did not take up his position until the following year (4th May 1611). Unfortunately Foscarini’s position came under question in Venice. One of Foscarini’s secretaries denounced his to the Council of Ten, accusing him of selling state secrets to Venice’s mortal enemy at the time - Spain.

Foscarini was summoned to return to Venice immediately. Upon his arrival he was imprisoned - which was where he remained for three years whilst in inquiry into the allegations took place. Foscarini was duly released upon being found “not guilty” (30th July 1618) - there was no blemish on his service record. And two years later he was elected Senator (1620).

The Council of Ten:
The Council of Ten was formed in 1310 “to preserve the liberty and peace of the subjects of the republic and to protect them form the abuses of personal power”. In effect, the Council of Ten was actually made up of 17:
• the Doge - who presided over all and was elected ruler for a specific term.
• the Prime Minster - elected chairman of the government
• the Signoria - comprised of three Capi (three chiefs of the Great Council); six Savii Grandi (modern-day Cabinet); three Savii da Terra Firma and three Savii agli Ordini or da Mar (Ministers of War, Finance and Marine).

These men, for there were no women, were elected for a specific term, depending upon their position. In effect, this ensured that any attempt on the part of one person or a family or a group to gain sole power was neutralized. Even the Church was excluded from taking any part in the government of the Republic.

The Countess of Arundel:

Countess Alatheia Talbot

At the age of 35yo, this formidable woman arrived in Venice in 1621. Alatheia Talbot was the granddaughter of the infamous Bess of Hardwick (goddaughter of Queen Elizabeth I of England) and the wife of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel, and a leading figure at the court of King James I of England. Both Alatheia and Thomas were passionate art lovers, and used their boundless wealth to amass the first great private art collection in England. And this was the reason for Alatheia’s journey to Venice - that and the education of their sons. Alatheia left her children at the villa in Dolo whilst she continued onto Venice and settled in Palazzo Mocegnigo on Grand Canal.

The Senator & the Countess:
It was whilst situated in the Palazzo Mocegnigo, that the Senator possibly renewed his acquaintance with the Countess. In his position as Ambassador to England, Foscarini would have come into contact with both the Countess and her husband, who was, we must remember, a prominent official of the royal Court. As to the true nature of this acquaintance, it has been suggested that the two were not particularly close.

Whatever the suggestion, on the evening of 8th April 1622 as Foscarini was departing the Senate, he was arrested on the orders of the Consiglio dei Dieciand charged with:
“ ….. having secretly and frequently been in the company of ministers of foreign powers, by day and by night, in their houses and elsewhere, in this city and outside it, in disguise and in normal dress, and having divulged to them, both orally and in writing, the most intimate secrets of the Republic, and having received money from them in return …”

Less than a fortnight later, Foscarini was strangled in prison and the following morning found hung between the two columns in Piazzetta San Marco.

Aftermath:
The news of Foscarini’s execution (20.04.1622) spread like wildfire throughout the length and breadth of Europe. Many rulers, upon hearing the news, were shocked.

Countess Alatheia was noticeably perturbed for her name had been linked with that of Foscarini. It was in her house, that Foscarini had been accused of passing state secrets to Venice’s enemies - notably Spain (via the Secretary of Emperor Ferdinand) and the Church (via the Papal Nuncio).

Sir Henry Wotton, England’s Ambassador to Venice, notified Alatheia by letter that the Council of Ten would be passing a sentence of banishment upon her, and that it would be in hest interests to leave immediately. But Sir Henry had greatly underestimated this woman - for she was aggressive adversary (they had crossed swords many times). Instead, Alatheia went immediately in person to Sir Henry, vigorously denying the charges and informing him of her intentions to seem an audience with the Doge, Antonio Priuli. Alatheia laid the blame for Foscarini’s death firmly at his doorstep, and let him know in no uncertain circumstances that she intended to bring about his dismissal.

Alatheia was granted her audience with the Doge - she was warmly received and assured that there was never any question of neither her banishment not implication in the recent tragic events. She generously accepted his assurances, but requested a public exoneration in writing in both Venice and London - this duly occurred. She was given lavish gifts by the Doge and with her wagons heavily laden with, left Venice six months later.

Exoneration:
Murray Brown begins his The Myth of Antonio Foscarini’s Exoneration as thus:
In January of 1623, a unique event occurred in Venice: Antonio Foscarini was posthumously exonerated by the Council of Ten. Ten months previously, it had unanimously found him guilty of treason and had him executed. King James I’s ambassador to the Serenissima, Sir Henry Wotton, characterized the event: “...surely in 312 years that the Council of Ten hath stood, there was never cast a greater blemish upon it.”

And so, after much investigation, Antonio Foscarini was officially exonerated of all charges (16th January 1623).

Throughout the summer, proof of Foscarini’s innocence gathered momentum, and was such that none could ignore it. Those who had accused Foscarini of the act of treason were brought before both the Inquisitors of the State and the Council of Ten themselves to answer certain questions. It was determined, during the course of events, that both accused had perjured themselves by making false accusations against Foscarini. Why they did so is not known, but Murray Brown presents a number of credible scenarios in his “The Myth of Antonio Foscarini’s Exoneration”.

The Council of Ten publicly confessed its error - copies were given to Foscarini’s family and were also distributed throughout Europe. Foscarini’s body was exhumed and he was given a state funeral. A statue of Foscarini is in Foscarini Chapel of the Church of S.Stae.

I wrote this article for "Executed Today - Antonio Foscarini" on 20th April 2008

House of Medici

A Florentine family, the members of which, having acquired great wealth as bankers, rose in a few generations to be first the unofficial rulers of the republic of Florence and afterwards the recognized sovereigns of Tuscany.

The following are a few of the more notable members of the House of Medici.

Cosimo the Elder

Born 1389, died 1 August, 1464, the founder of their power and so-called "Padre della Patria", was the son of Giovanni di Averardo de' Medici, the richest banker in Italy. He obtained the virtual lordship of Florence in 1434 by the overthrow and expulsion of the leaders of the oligarchical faction of the Albizzi. While maintaining republican forms and institutions, he held the government by banishing his opponents and concentrating the chief magistracies in the hands of his own adherents. His foreign policy, which became traditional with the Medici throughout the fifteenth century until the French invasion of 1494, aimed at establishing a balance of power between the five chief states of the Italian peninsula, by allying Florence with Milan and maintaining friendly relations with Naples, to counterpoise the similar understanding existing between Rome and Venice. He was a munificent and discerning patron of art and letters, a thorough humanist, and through Marsilio Ficino, the founder of the famous Neo-Platonic academy. Sincerely devoted to religion in his latter days, he was closely associated with St. Antoninus and with the Dominican friars of San Marco, his favourite foundation. His son and successor, Piero il Gottoso, the husband of Lucrezia Tornabuoni, a man of magnanimous character but whose activities were crippled by illness, contented himself with following in his footsteps.

Lorenzo and Giuliano

On Piero's death in 1469, his sons Lorenzo, b. 1449, d. 8 April, 1492, and Giuliano, b. 1453, d. 26 April, 1478, succeeded to his power. The latter, a genial youth with no particular aptitude for politics, was murdered in the Pazzi conspiracy of 1478, leaving an illegitimate son Giulio, who afterwards became Pope Clement VII. Among those executed for their share in the conspiracy was the Archbishop of Pisa. A war with Pope Sixtus IV and King Ferrante of Naples followed, in which Florence was hard pressed, until, Lorenzo, as Machiavelli says, "exposed his own life to restore peace to his country", by going in person to the Neapolitan sovereign to obtain favourable terms, in 1480. Henceforth until his death Lorenzo was undisputed master of Florence and her dominions, and, while continuing and developing the foreign and domestic policy of his grandfather, he greatly extended the Medicean influence throughout Italy. His skillful diplomacy was directed to maintaining the peace of the peninsula, and keeping the five chief states united in the face of the growing danger of an invasion from beyond the Alps. Guicciardini writes of him that it would not have been possible for Florence to have had a better or a more pleasant tyrant, and certainly the world has seen no more splendid a patron of artists and scholars. The poets, Pulci and Poliziano, the philosopher and mystic, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and a whole galaxy of great artists, such as Botticelli and Ghirlandaio, shed glory over his reign.

Posterity has agreed to call Lorenzo "the Magnificent", but this is, in part, a misunderstanding of the Italian title "magnifico", which was given to all the members of his family, and, indeed, during the fifteenth century, applied to most persons of importance in Italy to whom the higher title of "Excellence" did not pertain. Lorenzo sums up the finest culture of the early Renaissance in his own person. Unlike many of the humanists of his epoch, he throughly appreciated the great Italian classics of the two preceding centuries; in his youth he wrote a famous epistle on the subject to Federigo of Aragon, which accompanied a collection of early Italian lyrics. His own poems in the vernacular rank very high in the literature of the fifteenth century. They are remarkably varied in style and subject, ranging from Petrarcan canzoni and sonnets with a prose commentary in imitation of the "Vita Nuova" to the semiparody of Dante entitled "I Beoni". His canzoni a ballo, the popular dancing songs of the Florentines, have the true lyrical note. Especially admirable are his compositions in ottava rima: the "Caccia col Falcone", with its keen feeling for nature; the "Ambra", a mythological fable of the Florentine country-side; and the "Nencia da Barberino:, an idyllic picture of rustic love. His "Altercazione", six cantos in terza rima, discusses the nature of true felicity, and closes in an impressive prayer to God, somewhat Platonic in tone. To purely religious poetry belong his "Laude", and a miracle-play, the "Rapresentazione di san Giovanni e san Paolo", with a curiously modern appreciation of the Emperor Julian. In striking contrast to these are his carnival-songs, canti carnascialeschi, so immoral as to lend colour to the accusation that he strove to undermine the morality of the Florentines in order the more easily to enslave them.

At the close of his life, Lorenzo was brought into conflict with Savonarola, but the legend of the latter refusing him absolution on his deathbed unless he restored liberty to Florence is now generally rejected by historians. By his wife, Clarice Orsini, Lorenzo had three sons: Piero, Giuliano, and Giovanni, of whom the third rose to the papacy as Leo X. Although a man of immoral life, his relations with his family show him under a favourable aspect, and, in a letter from one of the ladies of the Mantuan court, a charming account is given of how, on his way to the congress of Cremona in 1483, Lorenzo visited the Gonzaga children and sat among them in their nursery.

Piero di Lorenzo

Lorenzo's eldest son, b. 1471, d. 1503, a licentious youth with none of his father's ability, proved a most incompetent ruler, and, on the French invasion of 1494, he was expelled from Florence by the people, led by the patriotic Piero Capponi. After several fruitless attempts to recover his position, he was drowned at the battle of the Garigliano while serving in the French army. On the restoration of the Medici in 1512, his son Lorenzo was made ruler of Florence. With him, in 1519, the legitimate male descent of Cosimo the Elder came to an end. By his wife, Madeleine de la Tour d'Auvergne, he was the father of Caterina de' Medici, afterwards Queen of France.

The Medici were again expelled from Florence, and the republic once more established, in 1527. But in 1530, after the famous siege, the city was compelled to surrender to the imperial forces, and Charles V made Alessandro de' Medici, an illegitimate son of the younger Lorenzo, hereditary head of the Florentine government. All republican forms and offices were swept away, and Alessandro ruled as duke until, in 1537, he was assassinated by his kinsman, Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici, who fled to Venice without attempting either to assert his own claims to the succession or to restore the republican regime.

Cosimo de' Medici

Usually known as Cosimo I, b. 1519, d. 1574, was the descendant of a brother of Cosimo the Elder and representative of the younger Medicean line. He was the son of Giovanni delle Bande Nere, the great soldier, and Maria Salviati. On the murder of Alessandro, he came into Florence, and was formally recognized as head of the government both by the citizens and by the emperor. At the outset, with the aid of imperial troops, he crushed the last efforts of the republicans, who were led by Baccio Valori and Filippo Strozzi. Various constitutional checks were at first put upon him, but these he soon discarded, and openly used the title of Duke of Florence. Although ruthless and implacable, he proved himself the ablest Italian ruler of the sixteenth century, and gave a permanent form to the government of Florence, finally developing the shapeless remains of the fallen republic into a modern monarchical state. He thoroughly reorganized the laws and administration, created a small but efficient fleet to defend the shores of Tuscany, and raised a national army out of the old Florentine militia. He married a Spanish wife, the noble and virtuous Eleonora da Toledo, and in foreign affairs leaned to a large extent upon Spain, by which power, however, he was prevented from accepting the crown of Corsica. His great desire of absorbing the neighbouring republics of Lucca and Siena into his dominions was fulfilled only the case of the latter state; he conquered Siena in 1555, and in 1557 received it as a fief from the King of Spain.

Tradition has invested Cosimo's name with a series of horrible domestic crimes and tragedies, all of which have been completely disproved by recent research. After the death of Eleonora da Toledo in 1562, he appears to have abandoned himself to vice. A few years later he married his mistress, Cammilla Martelli. In 1570 he was crowned in Rome by Pius V as Grand Duke of Tuscany, thereby taking place among the sovereigns of Europe. The title was confirmed to his son and successor, Francis I, in 1575, by the Emperor Maximilian II. Cosimo's descendants reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany in an unbroken line until 1737, when, on the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici, their dominions passed to the House of Austria.

Links:

Florence Inferno - the Medici Family